A fascinating new orchid project
is asking for volunteers.
The Natural History Museum has launched
Orchid Observers to investigate how climate change is affecting orchid
flowering times.
Scientists have noted that the
flowering time of the early spider orchid, Ophrys sphegodes, is clearly affected
and they want to find out how changes in the environment are affecting other
wild orchids. They are asking people to look out for flowering orchids, take
photographs and upload them, with the date and location, to the project
website.
Also, as part of Orchid
Observers, which is in collaboration with the University of Oxford's
Zooniverse, people can help digitise historical orchid collections by reading
and recording label information from the more than 10,000 museum orchid
specimens.
The plan is to combine these observations
with historical records to span nearly two centuries to compare against climate
records over the same period.
The results could inform future
research on how climate change affects not just individual species, but whole
ecosystems.
The man orchid (Orchis
anthropophora) is found in southeast England and begins flowering in early May
to late June.
By Pamela Kelt
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